The History of the Twentieth Century

Pablo Picasso begins his career in Paris, the city of the 1900 Exposition and Olympic Games. Turmoil in Morocco gives the French an opportunity to move in, but first they need to come to an understanding with the British.

Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley expounds on international courts, and argues that what we really need is an international police force.

Roosevelt tours America and runs for re-election. Ugly racial violence erupts in the South. An American citizen is kidnapped in Morocco, and somebody thought, "This would make a great movie."

The remarkable unification of Italy in the nineteenth century was complete, but the problem of uniting these disparate peoples of the peninsula, who over the course of centuries had grown accustomed to thinking of themselves as different nationalities, into one nation.

 La nascita della Italia moderna.

We return to the USA to take a look at some more issues facing President Roosevelt. Possible war crimes in the Philippines. Cuban independence. The Colombia Panama Canal. A major coal strike. And, most important, Roosevelt's prospects in the 1904 election.

After securing international recognition of his claim to the Congo, King Leopold sets to work to extract as much wealth as he can from the Congo in the most brutal ways imaginable. He is eventually exposed, but walks away a billionaire.

King Leopold II of Belgium, having decided his ambitions are far greater than the "small nation of small people" he reigns over, sets out to swindle for himself a colony in Africa.

As working class conditions seem to be getting worse instead of better, a new political movement emerges, advocating intervention on behalf of the poor, oppressed, and disenfranchised.

Theodore Roosevelt becomes President and at once begins turning everything upside down. Scott Joplin writes an opera about it.